The Toa of the Fourth Wall
by Chainsaw Demigoddess
Summary: Rhymaki Rhetora has a problem. Being Dangerously Genre Savvy has it's hazards, and having to teach the denizens of Mata Nui how to combat bewildering new foes is one of them, especially when they're about as Genre Savvy as the average rock.
1. Landing

Bloody Toa

Bloody Toa.

Yes, silly them. She was tall like a Toa, had mask and elemental powers like a Toa, but she wasn't a Toa. She was a tall Matoran. A tall Av-Matoran, but still. A Matoran at heart. Not that she couldn't be brave like a Toa. She just wasn't. A Toa, I mean.

Rhymaki Avhorem sighed and swatted at the narrator. "I admit," She said boredly, "that I am getting bored with the angst. Can someone come haul me out of this tunnel now, since you insist that I must be rescued? However, since you are the all-powerful narrator and know exactly who my, ah, "special" person will be, can it not be them? That's cheesy."

The narrator, being partial to some cheesy romance, sighed. "All right. I've moved you from a cave collapse to the Metru Nui to Mata Nui passageway. Someone should be along shortly."

"Fabulous."

* * *

Takanuva was bored. Really bored. He'd been clearing Rahi from the passageway in preparation for the Matoran to move to Metru Nui, and it was boring work. He hadn't found anything worrisome, except for a very rude word scraped into the rock. Tahu had solved that problem.

Now, he could hear a noise. The voice was distinctly female, and singing. Taka knew the song, but the girl's voice was all wrong. The tone was almost flippant, highly unsuitable for a song, from what the Toa of Light could hear, about unrequited love.

He ventured closer and turned a corner. In the "corridor" beyond it was a Toa. She was white and gold-orange, wearing a Hau, and lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.

"What do you want?"

Takanuva jumped. Somehow he hadn't been expecting her to speak. "Why are you lying there?"

The girl-Toa sighed. "Waiting to be rescued. I could get out of here myself, but the lovely narrator insisted. I made a bargain. I stay here, but cut on the meeting my true love, whoever that is, being knee-deep in carnivorous Rahi, and behaving like a Mary-Sue."

Taka stared at her for a few seconds. "What's a Mary-Sue?"

"You really don't want to know. Hey, can you help me?"

"Do what?"

Glare. Taka stepped back uneasily. "Achieve the purpose of the narrative. Sadly, the narrator is too busy being an asshole to tell me what that is, so can you help me by towing me along whatever random errand you're running."

"Uh. Okay."

Don't kill me. :P I think Taka may be a bit OC and my details may be a tad off, but I had damn fun writing this. Welcome the Toa Rhetora- Rhymaki of the Fourth Wall, Saharem of Flawed Characters/Mary Sues-Gary Stus, Lihept of Plot Bunnies, Mihaka of Plot Advancement, Jathis of Cliffhangers, and Nawt (geddit? Nought!) of Narration. As you can see, Nawt pisses Rhymaki off in a big way. Mihaka and Rhymaki are female, the rest are male.


	2. Subplot Ahoy!

**Heya, whoever's reading this! Yep, plot development anyone? A few questions are answered here, including why Rhymaki isn't in Rhetora Nui helping her team-mates out however she can. This chapter may contain offensive language. And, to make things clear, Lihept is the leader of the Toa Rhetora, with Mihaka as second in command. Nawt, however, is the most powerful of the six. In terms of power and authority, Rhymaki is in lower middle end. Partially because Nawt and Saharem both can't stand her. :P**

* * *

Earlier that day…

"_Nawt, you WHAT?"_

"_We don't need Rhymaki that much. Not very many fanfictions break the fourth wall these days- Every fanfiction has a narrator, and a plot, and the occasional flawed character, and plot bunnies. Jathis and Rhymaki are liabilities- and at least Jathis has an offensive weapon. We can do without her for a while." Nawt scowled. Mihaka scowled back. _

"_It still doesn't justify sticking her in the middle of a sub-plot, Nawt." She began tiredly, straightening her Miru, which was a rather violent shade of magenta. "Rhymaki was meant to be a minor character, a sidekick or love interest at best. Not a protagonist- She's not ready."_

"_Well, Mihaka, what's done is done."_

"_And you are an asshole."_

* * *

"Rhymaki Avhorem. Is Avhorem your Toa Team?"

Rhymaki interlaced her fingers and stretched, eyes shut. "No. I was part of the Toa Avhorem, but they disbanded less than a month after they started. I adopted it as a sort-of surname. My team are the Toa Rhetora, from Rhetora Nui. I got separated from them when Nawt got offended by all the yaoi and the yuri and the Mary Sues -he's so old-fashioned- and decided he was going to take it out on me."

Vakama looked puzzled. The other Turaga, the same. Nuju let out a whistle-click. "And to you too, I'm sure." She deadpanned, ignoring the multicoloured bunny sitting on Nuju's head. Which was easy, considering her eyes were still shut. "What I don't understand is the fact you aren't bothered by the fact you are now stuck on Mata Nui until your team-mates retrieve you."

Rhymaki opened one eye. "I am, but kicking up a fuss won't do anyone any good. I was talking to Nawt earlier, and he said he'll come find me if I find myself a nice respectable Toa-hero, settle down, and stop behaving like a headless chicken. Which mean I'll be stuck here a long time. I repeat my earlier question, which no-one listened to…"

She trailed off, waiting for the Turaga to show some sign they were listening. Nokama nodded and she continued. "Can I be useful? I hate being boring, and working is an excuse to have an accident or overhear something. Plot advancement, y'know."

The Turaga exchanged glances. "We need some heavy-lifting work in Po-koro. Could you help out there?"

"Sounds like fun. Count me in. For the sake of the plot, because our dear readers will get bored if I just sit around and mope, and the writer doesn't like boring people."

* * *

"Have any of the other Toa given you any trouble?"

"What?"

Gali frowned and repeated the question. "Have the other Toa given you any trouble? Pranks, insults, the like. They can be a bit rough, a bit insensitive, but they do mean well."

Rhymaki blinked. "No. Pohatu's a hard taskmaster, that's all, and Lewa tipped a bucket of water over my head, but that's all right. He did mean well. How do you cope with the climate here?"

"The climate? Is it too cold or something?" Gali looked concerned. The younger Toa shook her head. "It's hot." She complained. "Po-Rhetora is much cooler than it is here. When I get back to Rhetora Nui, I am so going to give Nawt a talking-to. See how he likes his lovely narration being interrupted all the time."

Gali nodded. "Yes, yes…What sort of Matoran were you, by the way?" she asked politely, curious. "I was an Av-Matoran, but I lived in the border between Ko- and Onu-Rhetora. I was a trader when I was a Matoran- I've only been a Toa a century of so. If I were an old hand at this job I'd be running around hero-ing, not falling into traps and causing plot holes by accident."

Gali dropped her load of boxes and smiled at Rhymaki. "It was nice meeting you. If you ever do need help or something, please do talk to me about it." She turned and left, heading towards the city gates and Ga-koro, contemplating. The new Toa seemed nice enough, if not a bit standoffish. She was so absorbed in her thoughts she didn't notice an arm shoot out and grab her wrist, hauling her into an alleyway and clamping a hand over her mouth.

"Did she seem odd to you?" her assailant hissed. Gali stayed silent. Tahu growled. "I said-"

"Mrrrphl Rrrphl Nrph!"

"Oh. Right." Tahu removed his hand from her mouth. "Rhymaki seems perfectly all right, if not a tad proud, rather eccentric, and a bit close-mouthed about her team-mates." Gali turned to face her Toa-brother. "Pohatu and Lewa think the same thing." She added.

Tahu sighed. "Yes, I have heard Lewa's opinion. Thank for letting me know, though. I'll see you, toa-sister."

The two Toa went their separate ways, one cursing Jaller and Takua for becoming Toa and leaving Ta-koro without a kohlii team, the other contemplating dinner.

Rhymaki took a break and promptly fell asleep, exhausted, unaware that two of the Toa had just had a conversation about her and two more were watching her from an awning across the street.

"She's a good kid." Pohatu remarked. "I've worked her all day and she only complained about the heat. And to think, she got bored over the ten-minute break I gave her and started working again."

Onua scratched his head. "I think she's completely insane. Carrying around all those packing cases and boxes with minimal complaints. It can't be good for her health. I'd tell her so, but the one time I told Gali I feared for her health I spent fifteen minutes untangling myself from all that seaweed."

"That was pretty memorable."

* * *

Rhymaki woke up to find Nawt bending over her, looking miffed. "You haven't fallen sappily for one of those Toa Nuva like a good little female OC." He accused, miffed. "The shippers won't be happy about this, not at all. Neither will Mihaka- this can't be all about you hauling around boxes of whatever."

Rhymaki sat up. "Oh, but I do love irritating you, dear brother." She yawned. "I was never a good little original character, anyway. Besides, surely you're here for some other purpose than saying this yarn isn't exciting enough?"

"Mihaka wants me to tell you she can sense a sub-plot. She's got no idea what it is, just that it's there. Nice subplots usually make themselves known to Miha. So I reckon it's something rather nasty." Nawt folded his arms and scowled. "My time's up. I must leave."

"Good riddance."

**Yes, Rhymaki is around the Toa Nuva's age, but became a Toa much, much later. The Toa Rhetora are a relatively new team, with varying degrees of experience, going from Mihaka, Nawt, Lihept, Rhymaki and Saharem (they were both in the Toa Avhorem) then Jathis in descending order of experience.**

**Also, thank you to **Nobility **for the review and alert. Squee.**

**If you're reading this far, I love you. :P**

**Chainsaw Demigoddess.**


	3. Don't Mess With the Pointy Stick

**It's been two years, give or take, since Chapter Two. So yeah. My writing style has changed a lot since then, although I've tried to keep as close to my original writing style and my original plans for the plot as possible and I'm not sure that the transition from my style of writing in 2008 to my style of writing now and the way I carry off ideas has gone very smoothly. **

**For those who read Quid Pro Quo rather than my Bionicle stuff, don't worry, the next chapter IS in the works.**

**In other news, Rhymaki is a bit kinder in this chapter. I think actually knowing what's going on does quite a bit on improving her temper.**

**Disclaimer: The Toa Rhetora belong to me, nothing else does.**

Later that night, Rhymaki woke again to find not only Nawt, but her entire team, minus Saharem, standing in the empty office space an obliging Matoran had dragged a bed, a side-table, and chair into.

"What is this?" she inquired tiredly, sitting up. "Is watching me flounder now a spectator sport?"

Nawt frowned. "You're dragging this out." He accused, frowning at her. She scowled back. "I didn't volunteer to do this, so I have every right to be mutinous." Rhymaki replied, stretching. Nawt said nothing- he knew Rhymaki had a valid reason to be obstructive. Well, at the moment she did.

"Besides," she added, "you didn't dump me here so I could settle down with some nice local Toa. You don't want to get rid of me THAT much- I suspect at least one of you likes having me around. So what's the real reason you put me here?"

Lihept sighed. "The original author appears to have lost control over the plotline. There are botched figures of speech, stray plot bunnies, grammatical error, and Mary Sues running about everywhere. You see, this is why fanfiction should never have been invented. It causes us all this trouble sorting all the problems it causes out." He complained, pulling out a long, curved blade and polishing it absently.

"And this concerns me how? If there's a problem here, can't we all sort it out instead of just me?" Rhymaki queried, getting off her bed and straightening her mask.

Mihaka pushed her leader out of the way and scowled at Rhymaki, stomping one shocking-pink foot on the floor. "Well, Rhymaki, the fact is..."

"CLIFFHANGER!"

"Shut up, Jathis, it's not time to end the chapter yet. This rogue plotline has been causing trouble everywhere, and the rest of us are in fact in the rest of the Archipelago, sorting all the problems out. We're all only here because Nawt is narrating that we are- if he stops for a second, we're going to stop projecting and go back to the islands we're cleaning up." She nodded at Nawt, who was busy talking quietly to himself, presumably narrating.

Mihaka sighed. "So far Mata Nui is the only one with an operational Toa team that has this business going on, and it also seems to be, for lack of a better word, the centre of all this. You're Toa of the Fourth Wall; you can go places we can't, not without you at any rate, so if anyone's the best for the job it's you. Get the locals to help you, I don't trust you not to get hurt by yourself."

"I am thankful for that touching demonstration of faith in my combat abilities, Mihaka." Rhymaki commented dryly, pulling a long, wooden staff out from underneath the bed and tapping the bottom end against the ground. It was a fairly average weapon, pale brown wood with the bottom tip painted purple and the upper tip painted white and sharpened to a point.

Mihaka gave her a confused look, elbowing Jathis. "Translate from Rhymaki to Common, please." She hissed.

A wide grin with far too many teeth in it spread across Jathis's face. "She's got out the pointy stick, Mihaka." He pointed out.

Nawt looked up from his muttering and raised an eyebrow. "The pointy stick." He said flatly. "The fanficverse has gone completely ballistic and you get out the pointy stick. Can't you get a chainsaw or something?"

"Don't knock the pointy stick, brother; I'm quite attached to it." Rhymaki replied, heading out the door.

"Besides," she added ruefully, scuffing her foot against the ground outside, "chainsaws are too heavy for me to lift."

She shut the door behind her and her team-mates disappeared one by one, leaving only Nawt, floating a few feet off the ground.

"Frank as always. Too heavy, indeed." He sighed, drifting back towards the ground.

Then the room was empty, except for a hairline crack on the window.

"Rhymaki, what are you doing in Turaga Vakama's hut?"

Rhymaki didn't pause in running the purple end of her stick over every surface she could find, jabbing it into corners, standing on tiptoe or getting up on crates to get to places that she couldn't reach.

"Searching for breaks or cracks in the wall." She replied, eschewing looking at Takanuva in favour of running her staff along the windowsill.

"There won't be any cracks; it's the strongest structure in Ta-koro." Takanuva said doubtfully. "And even then, why would you of all people be checking for them?"

The white-and-purple Toa shook her head. "Cracks in the fourth wall. I'm Toa of the fourth wall, see. And according to my team-mates, there's something dodgy going on with all the narrative devices around here. Seen any strange, inexplicably strong, beautiful, and clever people lately?"

Takanuva blinked. "No, can't say I have. So how to you search for cracks in the fourth wall, anyway?"

"See this stick here? It's got a thin tube running through it made of a metallic substance found in Rhetora Nui that reacts to cracks in the fourth wall by vibrating. The bigger the gap, the faster it vibrates. This purple end is made of that metallic substance." Rhymaki informed, tapping the metal with one finger. "The white pointy end is made of another substance that can go through breaks in the fourth wall. I used to just have the white end, but once when I was on a mission I fell through a crack that was bigger than I thought and got stuck on the other side of the wall until my team realised I was missing and fished me out."

"I take it you get into bad situations like that fairly often?" he asked, watching her clamber up on a chair to run the staff across the juncture between the wall and the roof.

"Yes. It pisses off my team-mates no end. Sometimes I can get out of them by myself, though. I've been working on my powers to figure out new uses for them, since at the moment there isn't much I can do." Rhymaki explained, sticking her staff under a chair and sweeping it around.

She paused. "Did you hear that?"

"No?"

Rhymaki folded her arms, moved her chair to another corner of the room, climbed up on it, leaned her staff against the wall and yelled "HELP ME! I'M IN TROUBLE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS ACT AAAAAAAAIIIEEEEEEE!"

Takanuva stood in the centre of the room, feeling rather like he had been dropped into one of those stories Le-matoran have where nothing makes sense at all, until a Toa he had never seen before flung the door open.

"I'll save you with my magical power, Rhymaki-chan and Takanuva-kun!" A voice yelled. Standing in the doorway was the most beautiful, elegant Toa he had ever seen. She was like a vision of perfection, her mask of Invincibility gleaming in the sunlight...

Rhymaki jumped off her chair and tackled the new arrival, wrestling her to the floor and whacking her on the head with her staff until the Toa went limp.

Takanuva frowned. The body of the pretty Toa seemed to be...warping strangely, as if we was looking at it through a sheet of water. He squinted, wondering if Rhymaki had accidentally clonked him on the head with her stick.

"We should probably dispose of this creature before its disguise melts completely. Mary Sues basically interfere with your head to make you think they're perfect, pretty, intelligent, kind, the whole package. They can get away with things no-one else can, which makes them dangerous." Rhymaki paused, getting back up on the chair and poking around in the corner. Her staff vibrated, causing her to nearly drop it out of surprise.

"And also incredibly annoying to all the normal girls and boys who try their best but can't measure up to a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu. They just have everything they want in the end, no matter what the feelings of everyone else are." She said, an angry twist to her mouth suggesting that this was a particular pet peeve of hers. "I fell under the influence of one once. My relationship with my teammates...well, it's still not so good."

"Need help getting that thing through the gap in the wall?" Takanuva asked, correctly guessing what Rhymaki intended to do next. She gave him a surprised look but nodded and together they heaved the prone form of the Mary Sue through the gap.

"So how come your island has all this business with the Fourth Wall?"

"Uh, well, my island used to be called "Rheka Nui", see, but there was this...thing, I guess, that happened about five generations back that made all the inhabitants Genre Savvy. Dangerously Genre Savvy, even. We could suddenly see plot holes, Mary Sues, et cetera. Then we found out about the fourth wall. The fourth wall is the veil between our dimension and this other dimension that is basically the go-between for hundreds upon thousands of other universe. This universe and a bunch of others are controlled by these beings called Authors, and they in turn have to obey a set of rules- they have to keep characters behaving in a way that's reasonable, for instance."

Takenuva laughed. "So in these universes Tahu can't be behaving like a giggly Ga-Matoran or Lewa being sad all the time?"

"They have to have reasons that would suit their character." Rhymaki corrected.

"So why are you poking around looking for breaks in the fourth wall again?"

"Well..."

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a dull green Toa jumped into the room and yelled "CLIFFHANGER!"

Rhymaki stood up and glared at the new arrival. "Shut up, Jathis!" she hissed. "It's not the end of the chapter yet!"

Jathis just looked at her.

"Oh." She mumbled, visibly flustered. "Right. It is. Sorry."

**PLOT DEVELOPMENT AND FORESHADOWING AND PLOT DEVELOPMENT IN THAT ORDER. And also, backup (because no team is complete without a random guy shouting random stuff)**

**Originally the person who finds Rhymaki in Toa Vakama's hut was Tahu, but I found the scene difficult to write as I can just imagine the conversation devolving into a fight to the death or something. Which would then result in a dead protagonist. Whoops. The only reason she beat that Mary Sue was sheer surprise, and because Mary Sues are very easy to take down if you don't believe in them. **

**Also, a shout out to Toa Rheka: Vhalyn Virus and a shout out to Quid Pro Quo are both in here somewhere.**


End file.
